Although Gāo knew that was a long shot at the very best.
Crowe finally moved, as he showed her the injuries he had received as the Renegat bumped its way through foldspace. His seemed minor, but he told her there were others, because Preemas had been so reckless.
By now, she was calmer. She had a plan, although it wasn’t much of one.
Then Crowe put his arm down, and said, Vice Admiral Gāo, I humbly request that you relieve Captain Preemas of duty. I ask that you do so by patching into our entire communications system shipwide…
Her breath caught. Crowe looked deeply uncomfortable as he spoke, as if he knew he was walking some kind of line.
He said all the right things—that he didn’t need to lead the ship, just that someone other than Preemas did. Crowe said he was following regulations, and he was more or less. He was notifying Preemas’s superior officer in the only way that he could, begging for help.
He ended with this, I don’t think the Renegat will be able to handle the foldspace journey. I am not certain we can make the journey back to you, either…
And she stopped him. She couldn’t listen to any more.
His thoughts were probably correct. She hadn’t responded, so Preemas sent them into foldspace, and Crowe, good man that he was, followed orders.
Or Preemas sidelined him somehow.
Or Crowe took over the ship after all, inspected it, tried to fix it, and tried to return.
And the journey through foldspace hadn’t worked, any more than receiving this communication in a timely manner had worked.
Gāo ran a hand over her face, wishing she could apologize to Crowe. Wishing she could apologize to the entire crew of the Renegat. Regretting the day she had failed to trust her instincts about Ivan Preemas.
She could have prevented this. She hadn’t.
And she would have to live with that for the rest of her days.
Part Twenty-Three
Rescue
Now
The Renegat
Floating series of impressions: the darkness of the bay, illuminated only by the lights on all the environmental suits. The man, the rescuer in charge, grabbing Serpell’s arm and not letting go. Serpell’s panic that he was going to rip her suit worse. The roughness of his voice in her comm system, asking if she knew how to open the doors.
Of course she didn’t know how to open the doors. Why didn’t he know how to open the doors?
Then Kabac helping with the doors, and that moment of fear as she realized that Kabac was touching the controls. She really didn’t trust him. She would have said so, but the doors opened, revealing this wide-open, well-lit maw filled with cushions and no controls as if she was stepping into a gigantic playpen for babies in zero-G, and then before she could say anything about Kabac, warning about him, the man, the rescuer in charge, shoved her into the life raft as if she was just a bit of luggage.
Other people were also shoved into the life raft. Lights were on—and she hadn’t realized just how much she had missed lights. Good lights, lights that illuminated everything.
And everything here was just soft walls on all sides. Designed, probably, for people who had no environmental suits or who had been injured. There were straps on each wall and there appeared to be built-in sleeping compartments, like bags attached to the walls.
It took her a moment to realize those bags were for people who were unconscious or injured or unable to hold on to straps themselves.
Things could be a lot worse. Everyone could have been so damaged they wouldn’t have been able to move on their own.
She swallowed, still too lightheaded for her own good.
The cargo bay door closed. She couldn’t see the interior of the bay. She couldn’t see Kabac. She assumed he was still there, but she wasn’t sure she cared. Or maybe she did care, but not in a good way.
A film covered the opening between the closed bay doors and this life rafty thing. Now she was really inside some kind of cube, even though it wasn’t dark.
Yay! It wasn’t dark. She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to handle the dark again.
Welcome, said an androgynous voice in her helmet. You are on a small rescue vessel on its way to Aizsargs Rescue One, a large rescue ship that will take you to the Aizsargs, a vessel in service to the Fleet. In less than a minute, the atmosphere will re-establish itself inside this vessel. You will be able to remove your environmental suit’s helmet, should you be wearing one. You do not have to remove the helmet if you are more comfortable with it on.
Serpell let out a small sigh of thanks. She would be all right after all.
She felt heavier than she had in hours, maybe days, and she realized that the gravity had reestablished itself too. Her feet actually touched the part of this vessel that was currently serving as the floor.
Everyone around her had hit that part of the floor too. A few people hadn’t held straps and had fallen onto the floor. No wonder it was made of soft material. She wondered how long it had taken the Fleet to realize it needed soft interiors on its rescue rafts for just this moment, when gravity reasserted itself, and some people fell so hard that in any other environment they would have been injured.
There, the voice said, as if it had heard her thought. Atmosphere has been reestablished. You may now remove your helmets if you are so inclined.
Serpell clawed at hers, her gloved hands unable to find purchase for a moment, before she remembered she had to unhook from the inside, with a very simple command.
Her brain wasn’t functioning well—probably due to diminished oxygen.
She pulled off her helmet, and felt cool air on her face. She took a deep deep deep breath, and realized just how long it had been since her lungs had truly been filled with air.
A couple of other people removed their helmets as well, and shook their heads like they were getting rid of dust. Maybe they were. All of them had hair matted to their scalps, which told her that their environmental suits hadn’t worked well either.
Apparently no one had tested the damn suits in some time, if ever, and that was wrong all by itself.
She took another deep breath, enjoying it, not realizing until now how much she had feared never being able to breathe like this again.
Your journey to Aizsargs Rescue One will not take long.
The voice clearly wasn’t just playing in helmets. It was also being broadcast into this little ship. Into the atmosphere of this little ship, where sound waves actually had something to vibrate through.
She wanted to clasp her hands together in another spontaneous applause moment, but she didn’t. No one else would understand it if she did.
Once we have docked, you will be able to step off this vessel onto Aizsargs Rescue One. From there, you will receive instructions on where you will go next. Please exit quickly upon arrival. This vessel is designed to return to the site of the rescue to remove more survivors. The quicker you exit, the more likely we will be able to help your friends, family, and colleagues.
Serpell leaned against the wall, but she still couldn’t let go of the strap that had been holding her up. Nor did she completely set aside the helmet, just in case something else went wrong.
Again, welcome aboard.
She didn’t care that the words came from a recording. They comforted her, and they seemed to calm the others—at least the others who had their helmets on.
Everyone still seemed tense though, and no one let go of the straps. The people who had never grabbed them in the first place just sat where they had landed on the floor, as if they were afraid to move.
It didn’t quite seem real, this rescue. And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she had died.
But she didn’t think so. Because she was breathing.
And that, all by itself, was the greatest thing she had experienced in weeks.
One breath in, one breath out, gave her a feeling of safety that she would have scoffed at months ago.
One breath in. One breath out. Safe.
F
inally.
Safe.
Part Twenty-Four
Arrival
100 Years Ago
The Renegat
He didn’t hear from her. The week Crowe had bought from Preemas was now up, and he hadn’t heard a single word. Gāo had not responded at all.
Crowe had thought she would. He still checked the logs, but not as obsessively. If he hadn’t heard by now, he suspected he was never going to.
And that meant he had to make some choices. But he wasn’t quite sure how to make them. He had hoped—oh, truly, he had expected—Gāo to come through for him, so that he would accept leadership, not take it.
Now, his choices were stark. He could do nothing and try to shepherd the Renegat through the long foldspace trip. Or he could try to wrest control of the ship from Preemas before the journey began.
The problem with wresting control without doing any of the groundwork was that Crowe had no idea who supported him enough to rebel against their captain. Crowe might succeed, or he might spend that entire foldspace trip in the Renegat’s brig.
Or he might end up dead.
He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was afraid of losing lives because he had made the wrong choice. Right now, when the Renegat went into foldspace, that choice would be Preemas’s, not Crowe’s.
But Crowe had made the choice, maybe as much as the week before, when he decided to wait for Gāo. Maybe he had been deluding himself. Maybe he didn’t want to take over the ship at all. Maybe he wasn’t as strong as he thought he was.
Because he stood in Engineering now, finishing up the last of the tune-ups to all the various systems, while he awaited Preemas’s shipwide order to send the Renegat into foldspace for the longest journey on record.
The entire Engineering crew was stationed throughout the ship. Stephanos was on the bridge, near the anacapa drive. Willoughby was near the officer’s mess (not the captain’s mess) where a secondary unit existed that allowed access to a few of the systems.
Those two women, his best engineers, could handle repairs and generally keep the ship together should something happen to Engineering itself.
Crowe was going to try to prevent that, but he had no idea what kind of strain there would be on the systems. They had all suffered some kind of wear and tear, and they had all needed some kind of tweaking. A few systems had actually needed major repair and improvements.
Crowe had done the best he could, given the supplies they had. What the Renegat needed was a stop at another sector base just to have experts other than him and his team look at some of these specialized systems.
But of course, there were no other sector bases nearby. There was nothing Crowe could do for some of those systems, not here, not on this trip. He had brought as many supplies and replacement parts as he could, and that hadn’t been enough.
Every engineer was awake and on duty. Many of them were in Engineering, but others were scattered throughout the ship, so that they could handle localized outages. He had technicians and former engineers standing by as well.
Crowe was handling the anacapa systems here in Engineering. The redundant systems that might or might not cause issues. He had placed Willoughby’s most trusted assistant, Luc Tosidis, near the communications anacapa.
Tosidis had great instincts and great credentials. He also thought fast on his feet, which Crowe appreciated. And Tosidis wasn’t afraid to ask for help, either. Crowe wasn’t that far away from the communications array, so he could go there, if need be.
Sometime during this excessively long (yet somehow short) week, Crowe had given up keeping the Fleet’s secrets. He had told the entire engineering team about the communications anacapa. However, he did swear them to secrecy. He didn’t want everyone on the ship to know about it.
He just wanted the people who could actually work with anacapa drives to understand that there was a tiny one in the communications array. He had shown them the sliver of a drive, explained how it worked, explained the problem he had found, and told them that they would do more work on it after this journey.
That way, if something happened to him or to Stephanos, someone else knew that the little drive existed.
He and Stephanos had opened the drive so that Tosidis could observe it, and maybe work on it, if need be. Crowe and Stephanos had debated that action. They worried whether or not to leave the drive completely contained like it usually was on journeys, or make it observable as it had been on that earlier journey. They had finally decided on observable.
Tosidis had one small screen open to his left, reviewing the data that Crowe had gathered from the previous foldspace journeys where he was able to look at the communications anacapa. Tosidis was small, his hair a yellow-blond with black highlights that made his dark skin look sallow. He had a wisp of a beard underneath his chin, and that beard was a reddish brown. He didn’t seem to mind that his own personal colors clashed with each other.
In fact he didn’t seem to give much attention to his appearance at all. His shirt was on inside out, and his pants were a little too loose. When Crowe had first met Tosidis, Crowe had worried about Tosidis’s lack of attention to his own appearance. Now Crowe knew that Tosidis mostly lived in his head. His attention to detail—on his work—was almost as good as Stephanos’s.
Tosidis seemed to feel Crowe’s gaze. Tosidis looked up, and Crowe nodded back.
They were as ready as they were going to be. Now it was all up to Preemas.
Preemas had said they were going into foldspace within the hour, and the hour had already passed. Crowe was about to contact Stephanos, quietly, to see if there was some kind of problem on the bridge, when Preemas’s voice boomed into engineering.
“As you know, we are heading into foldspace this afternoon. This will be a long journey in distance. We’re not sure how long we’ll be in foldspace, but given the bumpy ride we had the last time, we thought we should warn you that this trip will commence in five minutes or so. Put any liquid or loose items near you away, and if you’re so inclined, find somewhere to strap in. This will be your only warning.”
The announcement wasn’t as elegant or as informative as Crowe would have liked. Nor had it come early enough for the crew to prepare the way he would have wanted.
But at least they had warning this time.
Crowe peered around the equipment. He could only see three of his engineering crew besides Tosidis. They had braced themselves as if the journey had already begun.
Then Tosidis frowned and peered at the communications anacapa, a faint light illuminating the side of his face.
That light was the only real warning that Crowe had. The Renegat bumped and vibrated as if it were a much smaller ship heading into some planet’s atmosphere. The bumping changed to a kind of thudding, and then an irregular rolling that almost made Crowe lose his footing.
The hair on the back of his neck and his arms rose. He glanced down at his skin. It was pebbled with goosebumps. The air had a charge to it, as if some kind of energy had been released.
The light on Tosidis’s face had faded. Then one of the other crew members lunged at the panel in front of them—just as the ship’s automated voice warned that environmental controls were being compromised.
Two other engineers hurried toward the environmental controls tower, tripping over their own feet as they went. They reached it as Crowe could feel the gravity getting lighter. He could still stand, but he felt floaty, one of those senses that usually happened before gravity disappeared altogether.
The rolling had become bumping, but it was less noticeable as the gravity faded. Then Crowe felt heavier. The gravity had returned. Someone let out a weak “Yay!” from the engineering corner, that got covered up as the ship’s automated voice said,
Danger averted. Environmental controls stabilized.
Crowe had no idea if that voice had spoken to the entire crew or just in engineering. He didn’t have time to think about either implication. The bumping made his teeth chatter.
All
of the readings in his little area were just fine. Then that pebbly feeling increased. He could feel energy on his skin. It felt like he had walked into some kind of charge. It washed over him, prickly and filled with some kind of static.
If that was what had happened the last time, then the attitude controls might have been taken out by some kind of static charge, not by anything inside the anacapa drive itself.
“Hey!” he said to the crew through his communications link. “Don’t touch anything right now.”
He saw Tosidis nod. Crowe couldn’t quite see anyone else. He hoped no one on the bridge touched anything either. Or maybe they weren’t even feeling this.
The sense of being inside some kind of prickly energy field increased. The prickling grew into tiny painful stabs, as if he were being jabbed with a thousand needles on all of his exposed skin. He closed his eyes, protecting himself from the sensation there at least. Then the prickling/stabbing started on the edge of his ears, on his lips, on his cheeks. He wanted to brush it off, but he couldn’t.
He wasn’t sure he dared to move.
The tiny stabbing sensation grew worse. It felt like something was puncturing his skin. He could now feel those stabs through the thin parts of his clothing—his sleeves, his pants around his upper thighs, and the tops of his feet where his socks slid into his shoes. His skin was swelling in response to that continual stabbing pressure.
The ship continued to bump and roll, the foldspace journey going on forever and ever and ever. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take the pain. He wanted to check with his crew, but he didn’t want to open his mouth, afraid that the prickling/stabbing sensation would go to his vulnerable gums and tongue and the inside of his cheeks. Maybe even go right down his throat.
The bumping grew in teeth-chattering regularity. He felt his feet slide across the floor, but the gravity remained on. He resisted the urge to put out a hand to steady himself, hoping his static/energy-covered body didn’t slide into nearby equipment.
The Renegat Page 49